


Blue Bayou

by HuntressDaughter



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, But not of the marriage kind, M/M, Mag7Week, proposal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-23
Updated: 2017-09-23
Packaged: 2019-01-04 11:15:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12167769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HuntressDaughter/pseuds/HuntressDaughter
Summary: He'd made it through four years of war and fourteen years of playing gypsy across the frontier, and all that amounted to was too many close calls. Waking up from his bell tower crash, Goodnight makes up his mind then and there that the West will not be where he dies. The muddy waters of the Mississippi flow through his veins just as much as any iron ever will. He's a Louisiana man at his core.So Goodnight and Billy take their share of the earnings and pack up their bags as soon as they can sit well enough in the saddle, and they set their path southeast. Back to Louisiana, where the trees are tall and dense and green, and where even after nearly two hundred years of being settled, everything still feels wild. Where even after so many years, nothing has changed.





	Blue Bayou

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bronzeinferno](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bronzeinferno/gifts), [8OrangeMatilda8](https://archiveofourown.org/users/8OrangeMatilda8/gifts).



> My Day One: Proposal of Mag7 Week, in which Billy makes an offer Goodnight can't resist.
> 
> For Bronzeinferno for helping me develop the idea (and way too many more). But this is our beginning.
> 
> For 8OrangeMatilda8--you said you liked my Goody/Billy stuff, and darling, I want to give you all the Goody/Billy I can possibly make.
> 
> Idea comes from the song "Blue Bayou," performed by Roy Orbinson/Linda Ronstadt, as well as my overwhelming love of New Orleans.

“Maybe after we leave here, we can go back together,” Billy says, and Goodnight looks at him in pain and disbelief. Because they won't be leaving here. When he’d walked through four years of one war, he would’t make it out of another, and neither would Billy if he was walking next to him; that's just the way of the world, a hard-learned lesson Goodnight could have gone his life without knowing.

But he says, “Maybe,” just to appease Billy. Just because he's thankful Billy's trying. Just because he's thankful for Billy, and he is going to miss him.

When Billy goes with a long look after him, Goodnight packs his bags and takes in Billy’s things still lying around the room. Some of them he almost packed because he's so used to throwing everything into a bag without much thought, but then he realized those were Billy’s, that he’d bought them with his half of the money that they never really split. That's Goodnight’s comb, but Billy uses it more than he does; and that's Billy’s book, really and truly, even though Goodnight has read it three times.

Yes, he is going to miss Billy, but it serves him right. All of this serves him right.

He rides away with a different memory of Billy in every step because Lord knows after so many years he has enough to fill every moment of the rest of his goddamned life, however long that may be. There's Billy shaking his head at him, and there's Billy peeling off his layers, Billy slipping into the cool waters to join him. There's Billy standing in the rain with a smile on his face, and there's Billy coming to him, pressing him into the ground. There are enough moments to fill his life, and there still aren’t enough.

It's no wonder, really, that he goes back. After so long, how could his last memory not be of Billy?

And yet, with his last true memories being of Faraday, Goodnight wakes in Mrs. Cullen’s spare room, his head spinning, mouth dry, his entire body aching. He thinks he's dead and reached a strange, strange hell until he turns his head just slightly to find Billy in the bed next to him.

If he was in hell, he wouldn't have Billy.

He looks at Billy and remembers his last conversation with Sam— _I believe a man's got the right to choose where he dies_ —and realizes two things. One is that everything hurts and he should not be alive, and two: this is his last chance to die at home. He'd made it through four years of war and fourteen years of playing gypsy across the frontier, and all that amounted to was too many close calls. Waking up from his bell tower crash, Goodnight makes up his mind then and there that the West will not be where he dies. The muddy waters of the Mississippi flow through his veins just as much as any iron ever will. He is a Louisiana man at his core.

So Goodnight and Billy take their share of the earnings and pack up their bags as soon as they can sit well enough in the saddle, and they set their path southeast.

Their days of sleeping on the range behind them, the two spend their nights in hotels because if Goodnight is being honest, age and a body that had been pumped full of lead do not lend itself to an ability to get up and down. Often their travel time each day is cut shorter than it would have been had they gone from sunup to sundown, but Goodnight doesn't mind; less time on the road means more time curled around Billy in a bed too small for the both of them, but neither Goodnight nor Billy can claim they aren't stubborn.

“Are you sure you don't mind,” Goodnight asks, usually once a week, to which Billy always replies that he doesn’t. The night before they leave Texas, nose pressed to the back of Billy’s neck, he breathes him in and asked the question again. “Are you sure you don’t mind? We can go somewhere else if you'd like, I won't—”

Billy merely rolls over to face him. “If you ask me again, I will slice your leg open.”

“All right, all right, no need to be hateful. I just want you to be comfortable is all.” He tries not to sound too amused. After so many years, Billy's threats don't carry the same weight to him as they do to others, but he appreciates them anyway.

“Shut up, Goody,” Billy says, rolling back over, but Goodnight can hear the smile in his voice. He brushes at Billy’s hair and settles down, and the next morning, they pack up their things and pass the Texas border into Louisiana, where the trees are tall and dense and green, and where even after nearly two hundred years of being settled, everything still feels wild. Where even after so many years, nothing has changed.

* * *

At Billy’s suggestion, they stop a few nights later just outside of the city in a place called Metairie, close enough that the gaslights from New Orleans glow in the distance. He watches Goodnight all evening, waiting for any sign that this has been a mistake and that all those times of Goodnight asking if he wanted to go had really been his way of saying, _Billy, please don't make me go back there._ But he continues on like any other night, so Billy doesn't say anything.

They pack up their belongings very slowly the next morning. Billy waits for Goodnight to say that he doesn't really want to go, but he never does. He wears a dazed look but determinedly saddles his horse, and, like instinct, he turns his horse south.

Billy has spent the past ten years riding into town under looks of disdain and surprise, but as they pass through the bustling city, larger than any Billy has been in since arriving in America, no one pays them any mind. The streets are dusty, and ladies more finely dressed than what he’s used to go swishing down them, leaving pale clouds in their wake. It’s a loud city. It’s a colorful city. It’s like nothing they’ve ever seen in the West, and even on first appearances, Billy can understand how this has always been home to Goodnight.

“I swear, sometimes I think it's harder to get to heaven from New Orleans than out west,” Goodnight comments after he shoos away a prostitute, but he winks at Billy even as he bites his lip, hands twitching around his reigns. Billy almost asks how he’s doing, but at the look in his eye, Billy withholds his question.

“I…I don't rightfully know where we should go,” Goodnight says as they continue to pass from what Goodnight calls the Vieux Carre into the Marginy. He says this but never slows, so Billy keeps going, unsure of what exactly he is thinking but knowing he'll find out soon enough. They wander up and down streets, past mansions and whorehouses, past saloons and churches, all on the same block in a perfect representation of the fusion of the strange city into which they have entered. They wander up and down streets, following along the murky waters of the Mississippi until the city fades into the background and they’re surrounded by trees and grass again.

And they stop at the water’s edge, where the land meets the marsh and disappears into slow-moving water. Spanish moss drips from the oaks and cypresses, and the late-afternoon sun paints the water a multitude of fiery colors. The air is warm but the breeze is cool as it plays with their hair, the loose fold of their shirts. For a moment, as Goodnight drinks all of this in, his eyes scanning the water and trees and sun, and as Billy drinks him in, time seems as still as the water where they wait. But then Goodnight closes his eyes and leans back his head, letting out a shaky exhale.

“Goody,” Billy says, quiet even for him, not wanting to disturb this land, and though he worries about about being able to find opium here, he considers lighting a cigarette. For a moment, Goodnight doesn't move. He stays as still as the water, as still as time, and Billy can't decide if he looks peaceful or pained.

But then he opens his eyes and looks at Billy with that closed-mouthed, lopsided smile. He looks at Billy with clear eyes. There are no ghosts, no owls, just Goodnight and Billy, and that's how it should be.

* * *

Eventually Goodnight turns his horse away from the water, and they meander down the river with dusk brushing fiery fingers across the sky. Billy rides close enough that their legs bump, wanting to just touch him, to be part of the repose. The closer they’d gotten to New Orleans, the more he’d started to worry that this would be a bad idea, but now he can’t think of any other way they could have ridden away from Rose Creek.

Just as Billy is ready to suggest they stop for the night, they reach an inlet where the trees give way to a dock bobbing in the water, and past that, in a small clearing nestled between cypress and cattails, stands a single small cabin, plain and a little dilapidated but still upright. They could stop there for the night.

They could stop there for longer than a night.

“Maybe…” Billy begins, keeping his eyes off Goodnight, unsure of how he’ll react. He keeps looking at the rickety cabin then down to his horse. They've been together for eleven years. Eleven years they've roamed over the land, hardly spending two nights in one place unless it was winter, always packing and unpacking.

And Goodnight looks so happy. Billy would plant his feet in the ground here if it kept Goodnight's muscles unwound, if it meant his face wasn't hard with the worry or the anger he carried and tried never to show. They've spent eleven years with Goodnight carrying this anger, and here it seems to have been washed away by the bayou. Billy would sell his soul, for what it's worth, to keep that anger away. So he says, “Let’s stay here.”

“Here,” Goodnight asks with nothing short of incredulity. He snarls at the cabin, then back to Billy. “You want to stay _here_?”

Billy looks to the cabin too. A wind could blow it over, he thinks, but it wouldn't be the worst thing they've been through. “Goody, we've never had shelter. I don't think now is the time for you to get on your high cow.”

“It's a high horse, cher. You have an affinity for making figurative horses into cows,” Goodnight laughs, and he follows Billy's gaze to the cabin. “Billy, are you sure—”

Goodnight will be happy here, so Billy will be happy, and when they're not happy anymore, they can leave. He’s sure that he can’t go back to watching Goodnight the way he was, wound tightly, face always shadowed with the things that followed him. He’s sure he wants this Goodnight, the one he gets when they’re tangled and talking and chasing the night with wandering hands and low voices. There’s only one clear answer. “I don't want to leave. I want to stay in Louisiana, New Orleans, here if you want. But I don't want to leave. We could be happy here.”

Goodnight swallows hard, shaking his head, and glances away with a bit lip. He laughs, clearing his throat before he says, “This will be a mess, Billy.”

But they dismount and hitch their horses to the porch and peek inside. It's empty, save for a few sparse pieces of furniture that decorate the kitchen and parlor and the cast iron stove. There's a room to the left, next to the parlor, that Billy assumes is a bedroom. The cabin itself is old, obviously, and Billy’s heard plenty of stories about Louisiana’s regular floods, but Goodnight says it’s high enough off the ground that they won’t have to worry about it. They open the doors and windows to air it out, watching as the disappearing sunlight leaves the stirred dust sparkling in their wake. It smells musty, and the floor boards creak, and when a storm blows in that evening, they discover the roof in the kitchen leaks. Nothing unmanageable.

The next few days are spent putting it into order with bandannas tied around their noses. As Billy goes around the few rooms with a rag, Goodnight awkwardly sweeps the floors with a battered broom they’d found tucked away in the kitchen. Billy watches him struggle with his hands, unsure of how to hold it, and he smiles as Goodnight scrapes it over the floors, not moving his wrists. He scrapes the broom a few times before realizing he didn’t take any dirt and debris with him and tries again. And then again. As if feeling Billy’s amusement, Goodnight glances up from beneath his lashes sheepishly. “I was never domestic in this way.”

“You fooled me,” Billy says, a smile hidden beneath his bandanna. He holds up his hands and flicks his wrists, and though Goodnight scoffs indignantly, Billy hears long sweeps from the broom when he turns around. That night, when they make a fire, Goodnight sits on the sofa with Billy at his feet and brushes the dirt and cobwebs from his hair.

Goodnight complains about the lack of books. Billy complains about the lack of tools. Goodnight complains that Billy doesn't have his priorities straight, and Billy asks if he wants to freeze in the winter, which Goodnight laughs about the rest of the day, muttering under his breath, “Freeze in New Orleans…” They fix the roof so that when it rains, they can while away the evening warm and dry from the comfort of the sofa instead of constantly dumping the bucket collecting the leak, and they patch the walls so there’s no draft. They replace the boards on the porch steps after Billy’s foot falls through. They make it work.

After another trip to the city, they return to the cabin with a few books to occupy the shelves and food to stock the pantry. Goodnight tries his hopeless hand at jambalaya to celebrate, though they spend dinner choking down the mess, laughing at Goodnight's pathetic meal, and they go to bed that night in what feels like their bed.

* * *

_“When this voice, hush'd and still, no more sings thy lullaby,”_ Goodnight murmurs lowly to a tune he'd thought he'd long forgotten. His fingers absently circle on Billy's shoulder while the other man lies sprawled out, spread across as much of the sofa and Goodnight as possible. _“In this heart, torn with grief, lies a daunting love for thee.”_

Billy doesn't stir when Goodnight stops singing, and Goodnight peers down his chest to where Billy lies. He thumps him on the back. “Billy? You awake?”

Billy doesn't move, and only when Goodnight thumps his back harder does he sleepily mutter something under his breath, unintelligible but likely nothing nice. Goodnight snorts before settling back against the sofa, fixing a pillow behind his head and toeing off his boots. Billy has spent so many nights lying awake with him that it only seems fair to let him sleep.

* * *

“I ever tell you about Miss Salome Evercreech and the Mobile gentleman,” Goodnight asks one evening. They’re admiring the evening from the porch, Billy rocking himself in a chair while Goodnight rests against the railing, occasionally leaning over to look at the sky as if he might miss that first twinkling of stars.

Billy shakes his head, having heard plenty on Miss Salome but nothing on the Mobile gentleman, and Goodnight drops his head with a snort.

“Well, you know what a real piece of work Sal was, and knowing her twisted sense of humor, this all makes sense now. But anyway. This one Mardi Gras—I couldn't have been more than ten at the time—a cotton man from Mobile came to stay and found himself at church on Sunday, and who should walk past with her hoops swaying and her nose in the air but Miss Salome Evercreech. I'm telling you Billy, just one passing from her had every man's heart swept along with her skirts, and the Mobile gentleman was no different. He took a shining to ol’ Sal before he knew what she was like, only saw her pretty, pretty face.

“Well Sal made her debut that following week or so, and Lord Almighty if she didn't have the beaux flocking around her. I reckon it was the only thing she ever let her mama teach her, how to flutter those eyes and smile coyly and speak so that they had to lean in to hear her voice. Next thing we know, the gentleman from Mobile is escorting her to a ball at the end of the week, and then to another and another, and he's calling at their house almost to the point it's impolite, and when he walked out of the jeweler's one day, we thought New Orleans would be rid of one Evercreech girl by Easter.

“That was before we saw them riding through town in his carriage. He was just a lark up there in the buggy, just talking away, but Sal—well, she was a fearsome creature when she wasn't angry, and was she _angry._ She rode by me with the biggest scowl on her face and her eyes just blazing, and I swear it felt like death had just ridden by when she passed.

“Well the Evercreeches threw their ball toward the end of the season, and everyone thought he would propose that night, so it wasn’t a surprise when they disappeared into the garden that evening. It was a surprise, though, when, not too long after, he went tearing through the house just as white as could be, mumbling all kinds of stuff about ghosts and death and whatnot. We didn't see him ever again after that night.”

“Did she kill him,” Billy asks, laughing in his silent way.

“I don't know about that, but I wouldn't have put it past her to have done a bit of voodoo. But do you want to know a secret, Billy?”

“What's that, Goody?”

“Some people say—and I was too young to be one of them—that right after the Mobile gentleman went running inside, that Miss Salome’s baby sister went darting in a servant’s door with her white dress all dirty. If you ever mentioned the Mobile gentleman around them, they'd get awfully quiet and just kinda smile, and if you ask me, I'd say baby sister was Sal’s voodoo.

“And you'd think that would be enough to keep any man away after that, but within a few weeks, she had every potential suitor in New Orleans at her door. She was a real pretty woman,” Goodnight says, his voice changing character. He isn't looking at Billy anymore, and he isn't looking at their surroundings either, but somewhere long past, where Miss Salome Evercreech walked with swaying hips and chased away beaux almost as fast as they flocked to her.

“She was a real pretty woman,” Goodnight says again, and then adds, “a real good one too.”

It used to be that Billy didn't know where he went when he got like this, but now he does. He goes to the sparkling houses and tailored clothing that contrasts starkly to how he's lived with Billy, on the open range covered in dust or in seedy hotels. He goes to some place where Billy will never truly know, where he’ll always be an outsider looking in through Goodnight’s tales.

Slowly Goodnight turns his head to him, still with those faraway eyes, and Billy wants so badly to pull him close, to remind him of where he is, remind him of who he is with. He wants to hold out his arm and have Goodnight tuck himself into his side, let Goodnight push them in the swing in his slow, distracted way.

But then Goodnight sniffs and drops his head, and when he looks back up from under his lashes, he wears a smile, boyish and bashful. The corners of Billy’s own lips tug involuntarily at the sight. It’s stupid, he tells himself, that after more than a decade Goodnight can still make his breath hitch, but it happens nevertheless when a rough palm tips his head over the back of the chair.

“Billy Rocks, I reckon you could have given Sal a run for her money,” Goodnight breathes into his mouth, and then Goodnight’s lips are on Billy’s.

* * *

He'd been with Billy for almost three years before he saw his back. It was still the period where, even after they’d been together for so long, Billy never failed to flinch whenever Goodnight brushed against him ever so lightly.

It had been an accident. Billy was always awake and dressed before Goodnight began to stir, but that morning, he'd opened his eyes to find Billy turned away, pulling on a shirt—Goodnight realizes now it was _his_ shirt—and Goodnight's stomach dropped at the patchwork of scars, some small faint, others still red and painful. Goodnight knew how he'd gotten them; when, he didn't know, but he knew how. He'd grown up in Louisiana, after all.

And then he'd noticed that Billy had turned around. He met Goodnight's eye and dropped his own, and it was the first time Goodnight had ever seen anything besides stoic determination on his face.

That night, when he'd gotten Billy out of his shirt and sated, he'd run his finger over the scars and pressed his lips to them. He had conformed his body to Billy’s and pulled him closer, the warmth of his breath on Billy’s neck turning his skin to gooseflesh beneath his fingers. His hand roamed over Billy's chest then, the flat expanse he has long since mapped and memorized, and slowly, oh so painfully slowly, Billy had relaxed against him.

After that night, Billy had gradually flinched less and less.

Goodnight watches Billy now. He sits on the dock with his back to the cabin, cross-legged, hair down to his shoulders, face turned up to the rising sun and almost silhouetted in its shadow. There’s no trace of the tension that he’s carried on his shoulders since the very beginning, just perfect ease, something Goodnight has never seen before, and he wishes they had come here long before now. What he wouldn’t have given to see Billy so relaxed, so at peace, happy as he deserves.

He can’t keep his hands off Billy in these moments. He can’t keep from touching him when Billy looks up with that expression, eyes half-opened, lips turned up, and when Billy melts beneath his touch, Goodnight does the same. He buries his face into the part of Billy's neck that he turns away, buries one hand in his hair that is still as dark as night even as Goodnight’s grays, buries the burdens that are no longer of importance. His only thought is one of thanks when Billy's fingers play at the buttons of his shirt because Billy is so at ease that he doesn't care if they're in the open. His only thought is one of thanks when Billy’s hands run over his chest because Billy sets him on fire.

Billy’s never been anything but hard to Goodnight, hard and worn and toughened, but in this light, Goodnight wonders how anyone could see Billy as anything but soft. In this light, pure and unadulterated, Goodnight wishes the world had been a kinder place to Billy, wishes they could see how he smiles so freely and how he bites his lip when he cooks and how he just _breathes._

Goodnight has lost count of all the terrible things he's done in his life, but maybe Billy is his redemption.

* * *

For the most part, they remain secluded on their swampy bit of paradise, only venturing into the city for a night of poker or when they need supplies they can’t get off their land, some oil, new books, flour and sugar—the latter of which Goodnight insists is best from Louisiana. And when they do make it to the city, Goodnight goes on his rounds.

He always walks down Prytania Street and admires the houses, some little square things, colorful and exciting, and others white and monstrous and looming behind iron gates. “You wouldn't believe the parties that went on here, Billy. Why, my sister and I used to compete over who could throw the most impressive balls each season. She got me the year with the peacocks, but I reclaimed my title with those diamonds,” he says sometimes. The way he tells it, Billy would swear he hears tinkling glasses and the swishing of skirts to the beat of the band. The way he tells it, Billy does believe it.

They stroll through the city square and pop into different shops. Some of the older the shopkeepers recognize him, and they stop to talk, Goodnight leaning genially on the counter while Billy takes great interest in some bit of rubbish or other. _Do you remember,_ the shopkeeper asks, and Goodnight will nod and laugh and carry on merrily, and Billy wants to snort because remembering isn't the trick so much as forgetting.

Then they'll ride up River Road, past even more extravagant and luxurious homes. Goodnight points to different ones, even to places where there is nothing except land, and tells Billy who lives there—or used to. “That was the Delacroix place, couldn't stand him, but his wife was sweet. They grew tobacco. Can you imagine that? All this river land and they grew tobacco. And that's Fair Oaks, where the Magees lived, fought the war almost in its entirety with the oldest boy. Oh—oh, Billy, that was where the Verrets lived! I'll tell you, there are no women in the world sillier or more fun than those Verret girls were.”

Billy knows the Verret girls and the Magees and the Delacroixes. He knows how the Verret girls could be heard shouting and laughing all the way down the street, and the oldest Magee boy was never without a ruddy face and a drink in hand, and Mrs. Delacroix wasn’t very bright and never had anything to say. He knows how the Verret girls wept during the war, and the oldest Magee boy’s war fever quelled years before he was ever brought home, and how Mrs. Delacroix clipped soldiers’ hair and sent it home to their mothers. Billy knows that once everyone had been happy, and then they had been no more. All that's left of them now are these houses and their memories in Goodnight's head.

Riding on, they stop at what Goodnight describes as a Creole house. It must have once been colorful, but now time has made it into a dull yellow, the green shutters faded and in disrepair, the pink and purple paint of the porch railing chipped. Goodnight doesn't look at the house when they come here but takes a path to a little clearing with marble tombs. He traces the engravings and stands with a bowed head for a long time, and Billy holds the horses until he's ready to leave.

When they return home in those evenings—and isn't it a strange concept, that after nearly fifteen years together they can finally return to a home—Goodnight is quieter than usual, but from the way he curls into Billy’s side and with French nothings presses soft kisses to any skin he can find exposed, Billy knows that he's just fine.

* * *

“One time we had an ugly contest.”

Billy chokes on his mouthful of jambalaya and glances with watery eyes at Goodnight. It had taken a few times for the meal to be edible, but Goodnight had worked at it, carefully noting his ingredients each time until one day they had put a spoonful of something _good_ in their mouths. It was rich and smoky, the andouille perfectly caramelized, and Billy had teased him relentlessly about where that kind of cooking had been during all their time together.

An autumn breeze keeping them chilled, which Goodnight uses as his excuse to sit close to Billy, they sit in the swing with their dinner, which is in a shared bowl between the two of them that only Billy is really eating.

“An ugly contest,” Billy repeats once he’s able to breathe again, the corner of his lips twitching upward.

“Back in the war,” Goodnight says with a hint of his gravelly laughter in his own voice. He meets Billy’s glance from the corner of his eye and tries unsuccessfully to hide his own smile. He raises his eyebrows in an attempt to pull his innocent look, but at Billy’s own raised eyebrows, he rolls his eyes, sighing, “It wasn’t all fighting. Half the time, it felt like we weren’t doing nothing but twiddling our thumbs, so we had to find ways to entertain ourselves. Some way or another, one of the officers procured this harmonica that we were supposed to contest over.

“There were three of them who were nominated, Reggie Bergman from North Carolina and Cecil Martin and David Gilmore from Virginia. Well, Micah Magee—from down the road at Fair Oaks—he told Cecil that he couldn’t be in it on account of his eyes. ‘Cecil, you got a gal’s eyes. God thought he’d make you a gal and gave you those eyes, and then he changed his mind and made you a man.’ And Cecil did have these pretty green eyes and bristly lashes, so we agreed he’d lost. So David and Reggie, they go parading through camp like politicians, their friends following behind pointing out and exaggerating every flaw. Well, finally someone suggested they couldn’t see any visible differences in the two of them, and the next thing I knew, they were both stripped down in nothing but their socks.

“And David—oh my Lord, Billy, I have never seen that much hair on a man.”

Billy lets out a short bark of laughter, which is cut off when he catches sight of Goodnight’s own silent laughter, how he shakes his head, tears falling down his cheeks.

It hadn't all been fighting except when it was, and then it had been flashes of light on a smoky field turned red by blood. War has a face, Goodnight often says, and the thing is, Goodnight’s never been able to forget a face. The face of war had been women in home-dyed black, their eyes swollen, women with red streaks on their skirts from the fingers of dying men who had clutched at them, women with sons and sweethearts who would not come marching home. It had been boys too young to have been weaned from their mothers and mammies, boys who had never known a day of hard work or tragedy, boys who watched their brothers have their lives taken instantly from a bullet or slowly from starvation. The face of war had been a Cajun sharpshooter with his eyes turned towards the heavens, praying to see one more day, praying to find solace in a pair of gentle eyes and little hands, praying _Oh God, my God, let me see my Louisiana home._

Goodnight swallows hard. He notices Billy's breath on his neck and the grip around his shoulders, and when he blinks, he's aware of the frogs singing in the evening sun, which leaves the water dappled in shadows. The evening wind blows through his shirt. Swallowing hard once more, he takes the bowl from Billy and spoons out another bite of jambalaya.

His prayers had been answered, just not the way he’d been expecting.

* * *

They've been in Louisiana for a good eight years before Goodnight takes him _there_.

Instead of going to the yellow Creole house, Goodnight keeps his horse going down River Road, and Billy follows along, curious but patient. They go a few more miles in silence before Goodnight, his eyes focused on the ground, stops at a grove they've passed countless times before. He looks at it, as though he can see something Billy cannot—and Billy believes he can—and with a heavy inhale, turns his horse into the trees. Billy follows.

No matter how hard he looks, Billy still thinks he’s imagining the path that Goodnight seems to know. They wind their way between long alley of trees to find themselves in an overgrown clearing of lush green grass surrounding a single marble fountain, dulled and cracked, and the brick foundation of what must have been an impressive mansion. Once it was probably white, though now it is faded by age and ash, only a shadow of what it must have once been.

Goodnight dismounts and glides his way to the front steps as though moving through a dream, his hand trailing lightly over the rusted banister. He gazes over lawn, to the trees where they just emerged, and then turns to the house. When they ride past mansions in the city, they laugh and smile, but Billy isn't smiling now, and neither is Goodnight. Instead, his shoulders rise and fall heavily, and he staggers a few steps forward.

Not of his own will, Billy moves as though to follow, afraid Goodnight will try to traipse through the house and fall through the floors. But he doesn't. He stops at the empty doorway, gazes inside, out the back, before he pats the frame and makes his way down the stairs again.

At the foot of the stairs, Goodnight takes a long, shaky breath, keeping his sight straight ahead. He’s looking at Billy, but Billy would swear differently; those eyes aren’t clear, they aren’t seeing the tall grass and the man standing in front of him, who has spent every day of the last nineteen years by his side. Slowly Goodnight turns away and looks past the house.

Off to the right, ten little white crosses stand erect and waiting like ten little soldiers lines, still keeping guard after so many years, and like a general, Goodnight strides slowly in front of them, perhaps reading the names that Billy can tell are described but doesn't dare check. A general come to tell his troops he has lost, he passes each one with a defeated look until he gets to the final three.

Squeezing his eyes shut tightly, Goodnight shudders a breath as he sinks to his knees in front of them, his shoulders shaking, his hands wrenching up fistfuls of grass. He reaches forward to brush his fingers across the letters of one, and in his wake, he leaves a dirty smear over the weathered surface. His hand drops to his side as he finally lets loose a sob that’s been held back for so many years. Billy’s own sight blurs, and he wipes at his eyes, doing his best to ignore the aching in his chest. To be this devastated, Goodnight must have been so happy once.

“Home—home,” Goodnight gasps, and Billy doesn’t know if he means here or their cabin, but with an arm around Goodnight’s shoulders, he guides him towards the horses.

That night, Billy lets himself be tugged closer, Goodnight’s fingers winding in his hair, lets their arms and legs entwine until it’s indistinguishable where one ends and the other begins. Some nights Billy knows Goodnight wants to be whisked away to somewhere he doesn't remember what he's done; some nights, like tonight, Billy knows that Goodnight wants to feel like he has some semblance of control, so he lets himself be that relief. In the morning, Billy wakes to Goodnight’s hold fast around his waist.

They don’t go back.

* * *

On a summer morning, Goodnight opens his eyes to mist rolling off the water and the sky turning from gray to blue, the stars still faintly visible. A family of loons floats by. Frogs sing all around, and Goodnight wonders when he stopped noticing them. When had this become so routine that he stopped reveling in it, the beauty, the blessing?

It's strange to think of this as a blessing. Years ago, he would have thought this was the cusp of ruin, to live in a swamp shack with another man, rarely going socializing. He’d grown up in a beautiful house surrounded by a horde of people, and he’d never been alone a day in his life. His days had been filled with family and his nights surrounded by society where he was the star.

This house, if it can even be called a house, isn’t beautiful in any sense of the word except for Goodnight’s and Billy’s. It’s tacky, if anything, and their renovations hadn't fixed how run-down it looked. It had seen better days, but when Goodnight thinks this now, he can't help but wonder if they've seen better days too.

He'd been bitter over those better days. He'd hurt for so long, and he hadn't allowed himself to mend. He'd been angry that he threw it all away to feed his honor and pride, only to leave himself starving of everything else. He hadn't been proud, in the end, and it served him right; he'd been ashamed of what he had done to his family and name. All those years spent without a home, all those years spent tumbling from one nameless town to the next, all those years spent in dusty clothes without decent food in his stomach—he thought he'd deserved that.

In the bed next to him, Billy, shirtless, sleeps on his stomach, his hair obscuring his face, which Goodnight knows from years of familiarity is at peace. Goodnight traces the patterns of scars along his back, and not for the first time thinks Billy did not deserve hardly anything life had given him, not the scars on his back nor the unease about his person nor that he’d only looked calm when he was sleeping.

At that thought, Goodnight smooths the hair away from Billy’s face and presses his own into Billy’s neck, kissing at his shoulder with such practice that Billy does not stir. There are so many things that Billy does not deserve, but this place is not one of them. If Goodnight had known this was what would happen, he would have come here long ago, faced his anger and demons because how could he ever be anything but happy with Billy like this?

He left this place alone, and he returned with Billy.

Billy does not stir. Goodnight trails kisses from his temple to his jaw, smiling in spite of himself, and when Billy still does not stir, Goodnight runs his hand over his arm. Once he would have felt guilty for waking him, but once Billy had not looked the same asleep as he does awake.

This isn't the Louisiana that he left, but it feels just as much like home.


End file.
